One-ton bull charged gate in 'fluke' rodeo escape

Details emerge in rodeo bull's run for freedom

SHAMINDER DULAI, Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Published 6:30 am, Monday, March 8, 2010

Hardball wasn't scheduled to participate in Sunday's RodeoHouston competition, but the backup bull managed to get in on the action with an unprecedented escape that ended with him being lassoed in the employee parking lot outside Reliant Stadium.

The 2,000-pound animal busted out of a pen Sunday around 5:30 p.m. as chuckwagon racers vacated the stadium floor, past Hardball's pen, spooking the bull as they passed, according to Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo officials.

“They came rumbling past (the) holding lane and scared it and the bull charged the gate,” said Leroy Shafer the rodeo's chief operating officer.

Hardball somehow knocked loose a 2-inch steel pin that was supposed to keep him confined to a special pen for bucking bulls.

“We realized it immediately, everyone saw it,” Shafer said. “That's why the wranglers were on it so fast.”

But not fast enough to stop the animal from finding its way outside.

Workers couldn't shut a second stadium gate because doing so would have endangered the fast-moving chuck wagons, Shafer said.

“There is no way in hell we could have closed that gate,” Shafer said.

On the loading dock security officers herded the animal toward the parking lot to prevent Hardball from joining the general population. That's when wranglers roped him and led him back inside.

Two employees were injured in the process. Hardball stepped on a female wrangler's foot, bruising it, and knocked over a male security guard giving him minor cuts and bruises on his back and arms. Both were treated for minor injuries and released from the hospital Sunday night.

Hardball was an alternate bull that was not used during Sunday night's bull riding competition and was moved from the chutes to the holding pen.

Stock manager Binion Cervi has kept animals in similar pens for the past six years and said such escapes are especially rare.

“It was a fluke, there's been animals that have been in it (the pen) hundreds of times,” said Cervi, who's family has been in the rodeo stock business for 42 years. “He's not an ornery animal. He (just) happened to be the bull in there when the gate got knocked open.”

Cervi gets animals from 30 livestock contractors and contracted Hardball from Flying 5 Rodeo out of Washington state in years past.

Hardball has been ridden 24 times since 2005 and bucked off riders 79 percent of the time, according to probullstats.com.

Cervi sees no reason not to use him again.

“He (was) not trying to hurt people,” Cervi said. “He was just trying to get away and go back to the other bulls. He's fine, he's out there right now eating feed and you can walk out there and he don't care.”

There has never been a incident similar to this in Houston, Shafer said, but he isn't going to take any more chances.

“Failsafe measures are being put into place,” Shafer said Monday.

“A second fence line at the loading dock will be in place by tonight.”

Hardball is back in the rotation and Tyler Thomson has drawn him for Wednesday night. “He's ready to go,” Cervi said.